


Thursdays Are Balmy (But That's Just the Weather)

by arosynose



Series: every day getting closer to you [4]
Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: F/M, also sunsets and fluff, anyway--it's Thursday!, fluffly fluffity fluff, man those innocent bystanders sure can be a pain in the ass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-23
Updated: 2012-05-23
Packaged: 2017-11-05 21:20:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/411139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arosynose/pseuds/arosynose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Hulk makes a day trip, and Darcy screams a lot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. There Goes Darcy's Coffee. Again.

**Author's Note:**

> I CAN'T. STOP.
> 
> This'll be another two-parter, because of reasons. Hopefully the second chapter will be done within a couple hours.

When Darcy sees the Hulk in person a fourth time, everything nearly goes to shit. It’s just minutes after the Avenger’s latest victory in protecting New York City (seriously, what is with all these supervillains lately? She definitely doesn’t remember there being this many evil scheming guys running around when she first moved here. Well, no evil scheming guys running around and actively trying to take over and/or destroy the city, anyway. If they’d been present, it’d been in the shadows only.

It really is weird that there’s been such an up cropping of bad guy wannabes since the Avengers were instated for the city’s (and world’s) defense. What, have their evil plans all come to fruition at the same time? Was there some kind of villain’s club, where they plotted and drew up attack schedules?

Wait, no. Focus, Darcy— _Thursday._

Right. So it’s a Thursday, breezy and balmy), and Darcy steps outside the lab as the last of the invading robots falls to the ground, power source lost. It’s kind of creepy, or would be if Darcy wasn’t so goddamn tired. She hasn’t pulled an all-nighter in years, not since college, and her body struggles to recalibrate. She’s gotten way too used to a low-stress life. The only thing that can save her now is coffee, and lots of it.

Her hole-in-the-wall coffeehouse of preference is way too many blocks away, so Darcy just ducks into the nearest Starbucks. The coffee isn’t nearly as good, but her main concern isn’t taste, it’s getting as much caffeine into her system as is physically possible.

Three sips of espresso later, Darcy is feeling downright perky, and the world is looking especially bright and color-y. Vivid, rather. Yeah, that’s a good word. Everything is very _vivid_.

…Yeah, she really needs some fucking sleep.

It’s in this condition that the Hulk finds her. She gets two seconds’ worth of booming footsteps coming up from behind as a warning before she is swept up into giant green arms. Her heart skips a beat, admittedly more because she is surprised and alarmed than anything else. When she realizes who’s holding her, she can’t even bring herself to care that her coffee’s splattered across the pavement.

“Hey, big guy,” she says, breathlessly, because the Hulk gives a mean hug and when she says ‘mean’ what Darcy _means_ is ‘lung-crushing’. “Yeah, I’m happy to see you too!”

“ **Hulk fight robots** ,” he rumbles, and Darcy can feel his breath in her hair. His whole body is kind of folding around hers, actually. It’s…oddly touching.

Darcy staunchly ignores the butterflies that have spontaneously erupted inside her gut. “Yep. I saw you on the news. You looked great!” It was only partly a lie—the newscasters had done a truly terrible job shooting him, and the color of his skin had been severely oversaturated, but Darcy had enjoyed watching the footage anyway. And if she’d maybe replayed it a couple times, well, that’s her business and hers alone. 

“ **Darcy hurt by robots?** ” Hulk asks, lowering her back down to her feet. One massive hand moves up to her face, grazing her scalp as if to check for scrapes and bruises, and Darcy doesn’t bother trying to restrain her smile.

“No, I’m fine,” she says, still beaming up at the Hulk. He nods, satisfied, and smiles back.

And then someone screams.

It’s not even a little quiet scream, like a yelp of surprise. No, this is a full-on, _shitting-my-pants-in-fear_ scream.

To say the Hulk reacts badly would be putting it mildly. In the span of a half a second, every muscle in his body tenses and his face snaps from relaxed and happy to really, really mad. His fists are clenched and up, and every single tombstone-sized tooth is on display in a fierce grimace.

Darcy’s pretty pissed, too. But the Hulk looks ready to start smashing at any moment, so damage control takes priority over chewing out whatever asshole is screaming. She leans back in to the Hulk’s space, tugging on his fist to get his attention. It doesn’t work. Instead of calming down, the Hulk roars. _Roars._ Darcy’s hear the sound before, sure, but only on the news. She’d been totally unfazed by the sound when it was filtering through her TV, but it’s bone-chilling in person.

Darcy takes a deep breath to steady herself and walks slowly and calmly to stand between the Hulk and the asshole somewhere across the street who is _still screaming_.

“Okay, Hulk, look, this woman is just being a dick, okay? She’s an idiot and we can’t smash every idiot in the world, no matter how much we might want to. The global population would go down, like, eighty percent, or something. Which would actually take care of the whole overpopulation problem. But that’s not the point.” She has to pause to take a breath, and in that instant whatever calming influence she may have had is completely negated. The Hulk is coiling up, like a big cat waiting to pounce, and Darcy feels the irritation she’s been suppressing well up within her. Because that asinine woman is still. _screaming._

Darcy’s had enough.

“OH MY GOD, _SHUT UP!_ ” Darcy shrieks back at the screaming woman, temper finally well and truly lost. “WHAT IS _WRONG_ WITH YOU.”

“He’s a monster!” the woman yells, and it’s all Darcy can do to keep from going over there and bitchslapping the shit out of her. “I’ve read about him! He’s a government experiment! It’s not safe!”

“ _DID YOU NOT FUCKING HEAR ME THE FIRST TIME_ ,” Darcy roars. “HE HELPED SAVE ALL OF OUR LIVES, LADY, INCLUDING YOURS, SO _SHUT THE FUCK UP_.”

Not just the woman, but the entire street falls silent. Darcy takes her rage out on a robot lying near her foot, and the dent her boot puts in it is pretty damn satisfying. 

“Come on, Hulk,” she mutters, turning back towards him. “Let’s blow this hater popsicle stand.”

The Hulk is staring at her with something between shock and wonder, and when he picks her up it’s with so much tenderness that she feels something in her chest start to ache. He jumps up into the air, and Darcy closes her eyes against the wind. She can only imagine how many times the Hulk had been through something similar to what just happened. She wonders absently if he’s ever had any friends, besides her. The part of her chest gives painful pang, and she worms her way closer to the Hulk in his arms. He responds by tightening his grip on her. If there’s any space between them, Darcy certainly can’t tell. The coffee and adrenaline are wearing off, and Darcy can’t be sure, but she thinks she might be falling asleep.


	2. Sunlit Rooftops Make Good Therapy Couches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fluff, fluff fluff. Of course, fluff, and fluff. And then fluff.
> 
> Oh and Tony Stark.  
> And eventually Jane.

When Darcy opens her eyes, the first thing she notices is that she’s not in her room. What, had she decided to take a nap in the park? Whatever spot she’s picked isn’t even that comfy. She squirms, trying to get into a better position on her rock-like resting place, and feels the lumpy ground move beneath her, adjusting. She freezes.

Then, slowly, it starts coming back, like a half-remembered dream. Hulk coming to see her after a robot attack on the city, Darcy yelling at some terrified and very vocal woman, and then falling asleep while the Hulk carried her. What a day.

She blinks several times to get her vision to clear, then lifts her hands away from where they’ve been resting against the Hulk’s chest, and rubs her face in an attempt to gather some degree of lucidity.

“ **Darcy awake?** ” The low, gravelly voice comes from above her, and it makes a stupid smile spread across Darcy’s face.

“Darcy awake,” she sighs. A yawn curls up through her throat, and once it’s passed Darcy looks blearily up at her big green friend. Er, more-than-friend? Whatever. Labels don’t really apply smoothly to an 8-foot-tall Hulk, anyway. They are what they are. Hulk and Darcy. And Darcy’s perfectly fine with that.

The Hulk isn’t watching her anymore—his eyes are distant, fixed on something far, far away. Darcy wants to know what it is.

“Hey,” she says, to draw his attention, “I’d like to sit up. Think you can help me?”

The Hulk nods, and as she starts to squirm into an upright position, he braces and maneuvers her with his tree-trunk arms. Soon enough, she’s sitting comfortably on the Hulk’s thigh, braced against his torso and trying desperately, _desperately_ , not to look down. She can see over the tops of skyscrapers from where they’re sitting, and she’s pretty sure if she looks down, she’ll have a heart attack. She might have one anyway, her heart is beating so fast. She tries not to focus on why that is.

It turns out she’s woken up just in time for a gorgeous sunset. The light is golden and reflecting off of glass-covered skyscrapers, lighting up everything in sight with a warm-colored haze. The Hulk is warm and solid beneath and behind her, and Darcy thinks she could easily stay here, like this, forever. She pulls the closest green arm over her lap and leans back with a deeply satisfied sigh.

“Whatcha thinkin’ ‘bout?” Darcy drawls.

The Hulk gives a noncommittal grunt, and Darcy grins up at him.

“Oh, come on. You can tell me anything, big guy.” She pats his forearm where it’s resting across her legs.

“ **People say Hulk monster.** ”

Just like that, the warmth of the moment is gone. Darcy holds the Hulk’s arm closer, feeling that space in her chest ache. “You’re not a monster,” she says. Her tone is as steely as she feels.

“ **Hulk smash,** ” he says, and Darcy kind of wants to cry.

“Darcy smash, too. Everybody wrecks stuff sometimes.” She smoothes her hand down the Hulk’s forearm in long, slow strokes. She can feel his torso curl in towards her, over her.

“ **Hulk…hurt people,** ” he says, and oh, God, he sounds all of five years old.

“You know Thor?” she asks suddenly, viciously. The Hulk nods against her hair. “I tased him. Knocked him out. Cold.” She smiles, sharp. “My friend Jane hit him with a truck. Twice.”

There’s a rumbling sound from the Hulk that she interprets as laughter.

“Seriously, we all screw up sooner or later. Some of us are just more predisposed to wrecking shit that others. I mean, you can’t help that you’re like eight feet tall and as strong as, um, a freight train? …No, you could probably stop one of those in its tracks. Anyway, you’re really strong and that’s no fault of yours. You just have to work on control.”

“ **Hulk not good at control.** ”

“Neither am I,” Darcy says flatly. “But does that make me a bad person?”

“ **Darcy good** ,” the Hulk says firmly, pulling her closer.

Darcy grins. “Well, there you go. You’re a good person, too. You just have to do your best to not smash the wrong stuff and hurt people, and be sure to apologize afterwards. You know, say you’re sorry. That goes a long way, trust me.”

“ **Hulk not have time. Hulk smash, Hulk get shot.** ”

Yep, Darcy’s pretty sure she’s just choked on air. She twists to face the Hulk, struggling to comprehend what she’s just heard. “ _Shot?_ You get _shot_ at?”

The Hulk focuses his gaze back on the now-rapidly-diminishing sunset. “ **Bird man shoot arrow, Hulk go to sleep, Banner comes.** ”

“Again with this Banner guy,” Darcy mutters under her breath, turning back to the sunset herself. “He is _so_ getting a knuckle sandwich. And a solid kick to the balls.” The Hulk makes that rumbling sound again, and Darcy counts it as a personal victory. “But anyway. Fuck the haters, Hulk. I mean, you should definitely try to be nice to everyone, but let me know if you get yelled at again, like today.” Darcy clenches her fists. “I’ll make sure they don’t do it again.”

Something runs through her hair at the back of her head, and Darcy is reasonably sure that the Hulk is petting her hair. How the hell are people scared of this guy, again? “ **Hulk scary. Hulk scare people.** ”

“People fear what’s different,” Darcy says. “And, honestly, you cut quite the imposing figure, with all the green and the muscles and the towering-over-people thing. It’s not fair, but life isn’t fair. If it were I’d be able to find decent, reasonably-priced clothes that fit around my boobs and don’t make me look trashy.”

The Hulk doesn’t have anything to say to that. Darcy hadn’t really expected him to. Except after a while, he says “ **Hulk not find pants that fit anywhere** ” and Darcy has to bite her lip _hard_ to keep from laughing.

“I hear ya,” she says, patting his thigh. It twitches beneath her, and what results is quite an interesting and _entirely inappropriate_ feeling. “So uh,” she blurts, “where do you live?”

The Hulk gives her a weighty look. “ **Banner,** ” is all he says, and Darcy wishes she had a little super strength herself, so she could seriously pound this Banner guy. What does he think the Hulk is? An animal to be put in a cage?

Darcy is opening her mouth to say something to that effect when the sound of something flying towards them draws her attention. The Hulk is staring, too, and his other arm reaches over to pull Darcy’s legs into a folded position and shield them from whatever’s coming.

When the flying thing gets closer, Darcy can make out shiny red and gold and a glowy spot.

“ **Metal Man,** ” Hulk rumbles, loosening his grip just slightly.

It’s Iron Man.

“Hate to break up you two lovebirds,” Iron Man calls, stopping to hover just yards away. “But SHIELD’s getting antsy, and I can’t distract them much longer. You should come home with me, big guy.”

“Why, so he can get shot with a tranq?” Darcy winds her arms around the Hulk’s. “Some heroes you guys are. You treat him like an animal.” Never mind that she’s starting to sound a little less than human herself, the way she’s snarling.

Iron Man’s faceplate slides away, and Darcy is sure this is done only so Tony Stark can level a nonplussed expression at her, eyebrow cocked and all. “Okay, first of all, no, and second of all, I’m pretty sure that’s none of your business.”

Darcy’s fuming aqnd working up a retort, but the Hulk disentangles himself from her and pulls her up his chest. “ **Hulk take Darcy home. Then Hulk go with Metal Man.** "

Tony turns his palms up. "Whatever you say, big guy. I'll wait here." He steps down onto the roof next to the Hulk. "By the way," he says to Darcy, as the Hulk adjusts his grip on her. "'Hank Green'? _Really?_ "

Darcy rolls her eyes. But then something occurs to her, and she presses a hand to the Hulk's chest to stop him from leaping away. "Don't tell Banner," she says, putting as much force as she can behind the command. "He doesn't need to know about this."

Tony just stares at her for a while. "Sure," he says eventually, the beginnings of a smirk taking root on his face. "It'll be our little secret."

Darcy lets go of a breath she hadn't known she was holding, and lets her hand drop. The Hulk jumps.

The evening does not end as planned. For one, Jane is waiting for her, pacing frantically and generally acting like Darcy's mom. "There you are!" is the first thing she says upon seeing Darcy. "You had me so worried!" Yep. Mom.

Then Jane sees the Hulk and her expression shuts down. Darcy is set down carefully inside the kitchen by big green arms, and she can _feel_ the Hulk shrink back from the window (and, consequently, from Jane). She tries and fails to not find that adorable. "Sorry I was out so late," Darcy says, before she can think better of it, "but I had a hot date." Both Jane and Hulk fall silent at that, and Darcy takes the opportunity to lean out the window and give the Hulk a peck on the lips. It's nothing huge, but both Jane and the Hulk look like they've been whacked upside the head. The Hulk recovers first and gives Darcy a tiny, unfairly-endearing smile before beating a hasty retreat. Darcy just giggles.

"Dish," Jane says, crossing her arms. "Now."


End file.
